Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/66

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16
SIXTH YEAR'S WORK AT TROY.
[Chap. I.

water of the Simois, which was only a few inches deep in the beginning of March, was entirely exhausted by the end of April, and the river bed became perfectly dry in the beginning of May. The same occurred in the Thymbrius by the middle of May, and (a thing unheard of) even the course of the Scamander in the plain of Troy had no running water in the beginning of July, and thenceforward consisted only of a series of pools of stagnant water, the number of which diminished in proportion as the season advanced.[1] As stated in Ilios,[2] it happens on an average once every three years, in August or September, that the Scamander has no running water; it also happens, perhaps as often, that the Simois and the Thymbrius dry up completely in August or September; but the oldest inhabitants of the Troad do not remember that this phenomenon ever occurred in any one of the three rivers so early as it did this year.

While speaking of the Scamander, I may here add that, on the 14th of March, I investigated the junction of the Bounarbashi Su with the Scamander, which does not occur in two places, as P. W. Forchhammer[3] states, but only in one place, about a mile to the south of the bridge of Koum Kaleh.[4] The rivulet of the Bounarbashi Su was, at the junction, 2 mètres broad and o 30 m. deep. In examining the soil in the neighbourhood, I was struck by the conical shape of the hillock on which one of the two windmills stands, which are immediately to the east and south-east of Yeni Shehr,[5] and, having investigated it most

  1. ↑ The inhabitants of the village of Yeni Shehr, who have to fetch their whole supply of water from the Scamander, are badly off when the river dries up, for they have then to sink wells in the river bed, and to dig the shafts deeper and deeper in proportion as the river bed. becomes drier and drier.
  2. ↑ Page 94.
  3. ↑ Topographische und Physiographische Beschreibung der Ebene von Troia, p. 14.
  4. ↑ See the large Map of the Troad.
  5. ↑ Ibid.
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